


Haven

by sussexbound (SamanthaLenore)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: John Comes Home, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6627910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamanthaLenore/pseuds/sussexbound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has been home 12 days, 14 hours, 45 min, and—10 seconds. </p><p>Sherlock has felt every second in his bones, his cells, his atoms.  He has felt them like a unexpected blessing, and an impending death sentence.  He can’t believe that John is here.  He sits and he watches John sleep on the sofa, in the middle of the day—feet bare, afghan tucked up under his chin, face lax, but brow still perpetually furrowed—and he feels his chest swell, and ache to the point where he sometimes fears his heart will stop beating altogether, and he will let John down—still, again, after everything…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haven

John has been home 12 days, 14 hours, 45 min, and—10 seconds. 

Sherlock has felt every second in his bones, his cells, his atoms.  He has felt them like a unexpected blessing, and an impending death sentence.  He can’t believe that John is here.  He sits and he watches John sleep on the sofa, in the middle of the day—feet bare, afghan tucked up under his chin, face lax, but brow still perpetually furrowed—and he feels his chest swell, and ache to the point where he sometimes fears his heart will stop beating altogether, and he will let John down—still, again, after everything…

He sits on the coffee table, and he watches John sleep.  John has almost done nothing but sleep.  Mrs. Hudson sometimes comes up with little plates of biscuits, or sandwiches, or fresh, fragrant pots of tea, and clucks, and shakes her head, whispering her concern.  “It’s like he’s not slept in years, Sherlock.  Just look at him.  He’s exhausted!”

Sherlock doesn’t need reminding.  If John hasn’t slept in years, that’s his doing.  That’s his jumping, his dying, his lying that’s drained all the bright sunshine from behind John’s eyes, that’s greyed his hair, and replaced the flush of his cheeks with a pallor the colour of putty.  Sherlock knows this.  He thinks that there must be some way to right it, but he doesn’t know how.

Words aren’t enough.

John has never been a man of words.  He’s one of action. 

His nose wrinkles.  He shifts a little in his sleep. 

Sherlock holds his breath, waits. 

John settles. 

Sherlock can breathe again.

When John wakes he will ask how Sherlock spent the afternoon.  Sherlock will say he kept himself busy.  John will nod. He will walk to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, the pantry, the cabinet.  He will sigh, and say he thinks he will turn in early.  He will climb the stairs to his sparsely furnished room on the top floor.  Sherlock will sit in his chair by the fire and try not to think of John alone in the dark.  It is how it has been every night since he came home.

John’s eyes are shifting and rolling beneath his lids.  He’s dreaming.  His fingers twitch in the loops of the afghan.  His breath hitches, releases, ragged and desperate around the edges.  He whimpers, and Sherlock’s heart clenches, cock twitches.  He smooths his palms over the thighs of his trousers, tries not to notice the flush that has come to John’s cheeks, or the way he’s shifted, rolled slightly onto his stomach, subconsciously seeking out more friction.

“John…”

John huffs into the throw cushion beneath his cheek.

“John.”  A little firmer, a little louder.

John’s hips give a tiny roll against the cushions beneath him, and Sherlock feels every nerve in his body light up with arousal.  He reaches out and lays a hand gently on John’s head, rubs the pads of his fingers against John’s scalp, in a soothing, tender gesture.  “John…”  He whispers again.

John presses into his touch, and sighs.  He hums and his eyelashes flutter a little before his eyelids crack open, and he smiles dopily, still soft and drunk around the edges with sleep.

“You were dreaming.”  Sherlock keeps his voice low, but he doesn’t remove his fingers from John’s hair.

“Mmm…”

“Are you alright?”

He sees the moment John realises his situation, where he is, how he is.  He sees all the beautiful vulnerability part like morning mist, and then it is the usual John looking back at him, weighed down, world weary, and angry at everything and nothing in particular.  “What are you doing?”

Still Sherlock doesn’t remove his hand.  He keeps his voice low, and gentle. “I told you.  You were dreaming.  I was worried.”

John will sit up now, will brush this off, will make his excuses and scurry off into the echoing emptiness of his room to lick the wounds that still weep and itch about his heart.

“Why?”

“You sounded distressed.”

But John doesn’t go.  He lays still.  He looks up at Sherlock with an expression Sherlock has never seen before, not in all the years of their acquaintance.

“I was lost.”

“In the dream?”

“I was lost.”

Sherlock swallows, throat suddenly tight.  “Well, you’re home now.  It’s alright.”  He dares to move his fingers a little against John’s scalp, just the same soothing little gestures he’d made as he tried to wake him.

“I was trying to find you.”

Sherlock forces the tiniest of smiles.  “Well, you found me.  See.  Here I am.”

“For years, Sherlock.”

They’re not talking about the dream anymore, at least—Sherlock doesn’t think they are.  “I’ve always been right here.  Always the same.”

“Not always.”

Sherlock nods.  “No.  Fair enough.  But now, and—always, from here on.  I promise, John.”

“I’m here.  I’m home.  I’m still looking.  Are you here?”

Sherlock nods.

“Sometimes I think I’ve found you, but you slip away from me again.  And I don’t know if that’s just me, or…”

“It’s not you.  Well—not only you.”  He smiles, and John smiles back.  “I hide.”

“Why?”

“Why does anyone?”

“Because it feels safer.”  John says this like it’s a fact, like he knows it from personal experience.

“Safer.  Yes.”

“You can only hide so long.  The monsters always catch up.  You can trust me on that.  I’ve got three broken ribs as reminders.” 

It’s the most vulnerable John has ever been with him.  Sherlock’s eyes dip down, take in meagre circumference of John’s ribcage.  He’s lost weight in the last year or so.  He seems small, slightly diminished.  He needs running.  He needs feeding up.  He needs taking care of.  He’s so small, and Sherlock aches to gather him up, to tuck him away, to wrap him up warm and shelter him from the big bad world, for a little while, at least. 

The sudden urge surprises him with it’s intensity.  John has always cared for him.  And he has missed it.  Oh how he’s missed it.  And by the look of John, the listless, hollowness in his eyes, it seems he’s missed it too.  John lives to be given the right to care for those he loves.  But who takes care of John?

“What to do then?”

John looks down, away.  “Mmm.  Yeah.”

“Find a safe place?”

John looks up.  Huffs out a weary laugh.  “Do they exist?”

“I don’t know.  But I think it’s worth trying to find, or maybe—create?”

The door slams downstairs, there is the rustle of shopping bags, and Mrs. Hudson softly humming _Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds_.  A siren races by on the street, muffled by the thick walls of the flat, and the curtains Sherlock drew to allow John to sleep more deeply.  A bird chirps just outside on the kitchen windowsill. 

Sherlock’s fingers continue to rub small circles against John’s scalp, and John’s eyes slide shut.  “It’s good to be home.”

“It’s good to have you home.”

John reaches up, takes Sherlock’s hand, and removes it from his head.  He sits up on the sofa, slots his legs between Sherlock’s, still sitting across from him on the coffee table.  “I need to ask you something.”

This is unexpected.  John sounds very serious.  Very determined.  His shoulders are squared, his jaw tight, the fingers of his left hand are gripping the sofa cushion so tightly, his knuckles are going white. 

Sherlock can feel his brain slow, halt.  He is most likely not wearing the appropriate expression, but John seems undeterred by that.  He hopes he won’t be expected to make a response, because his stomach is suddenly twisting with anxiety, and his jaw feels frozen, his voice trapped in his throat.

John is saying something, and he’s missed it.

“What?”

“I said, is it okay?”

Sherlock can only blink.

John sighs.  “I’ll take that as a yes, then.  I just want to ask one thing: what is this?”

Sherlock feels his brow knit, feels his lips press together in something ( _a frown? a moue of sincere confusion?_ ).  He should say something…  Something.  Ask for clarification.  Yes.  “This?”

“Us.”

_Us.  Two together.  John and him.  Both of them.  Home.  Safety.  Family._

“Us?”

“Yeah.  You and me.  Here, together.  Now, after everything that’s happened.  What is this?  What are we?”

“We’re us.”

John huffs out a laugh.  It almost sounds bitter, but his mouth is twisted into a wry facsimile of a smile, and he seems more weary than angry.

“We’re what we’ve always been,” Sherlock clarifies.

John looks up from his lap, his eyes snapping to Sherlock’s.  “I don’t know that we’re both coming from the same place on that point.”

Sherlock looks at John’s silver hair, at the dark rings beneath his eyes, the way everything he’s carrying has settled into the new folds and lines of his face.  He looks at the way John holds his body away, rigid, controlled, a soldiers bearing.  He looks at the small fidgets of John’s fingers against a loose thread on the inseam of his left trouser leg, and the way he worries his bottom lip between his teeth, pulling little bits of skin away, chapped, cracked, from all the other worries he's bitten away over the last two years.

“You love me,” Sherlock can do this, at least. 

John’s lips part in shock.

Sherlock can give him this, make it easy.  It’s so obvious, it’s telegraphing from every pore of John’s body all the time, every day, and has been for years, but it’s such a leap for him, such a risk. “And I love you.  And we’ve both always done.  And that’s what we are.  And that’s what we’ll always be—I hope.”

Now it’s said, Sherlock is painfully aware of everything he may have just thrown away.

John is frozen.  Staring.  Eyes unreadable.  But his body has settled, his fingers stilled.  He sucks in a quavering breath, huffs it out again.  “I do.”

“Do?”

“Love you.”

Sherlock’s eyes swim and burn “Do you?”

“Christ, yes!”

Sherlock smiles, tries to laugh, but it comes out sounding like a sob instead, and John slides forward on the sofa then, like he wants to do something, to help maybe?  But he stops again, elbows resting on his own knees, hands hovering just the outside of Sherlock’s thighs, eyes searching his earnestly.  “Umm…  I’m not sure, I…  I know what that means to me, Sherlock.  I’m not sure what it means to you.”

Sherlock sobs out another laugh, and the corner of John’s mouth twitches upward, while his brows knit together in confusion.  “Are you okay?”

Sherlock nods.

“Okay.  Can I touch you?”

Sherlock’s brain goes white.  He nods, or tries.  He wants, and he wants, and he wants, and John is just sitting there, looking at him, so he’s obviously not nodded at all, and he wants so desperately for something to happen, for something to come and rip him free of the traitorous  prison of his mind for just a moment, just long enough for something to happen, for this thing to happen, this one good, perfect thing!

He is crying with the frustration of that, and it’s humiliating, and terrible, and he really wishes that he could crawl away somewhere dark, and out of sight, because he’s dreamed of this, so many times, and it was always wonderful, a fantasy, something perfect, and beautiful, and soft, and now it’s this—awkward, horrible, and he’s drowning, failing, frightening John.  And John deserves better.  He deserves everything that Sherlock can possibly give him, more than that, even.  He deserves…

“Yeah, okay…”  And then John is getting to his feet, and he’s stepping into the V of Sherlock’s legs, and he’s gathering him, pulling him close, cradling Sherlock’s head against his chest.  It’s warm, and John’s cardigan is soft, the small plastic buttons cool against Sherlock’s cheek, and John’s heart beats steady, and quiet beneath his ribs, and John’s fingers card through his hair, and John is saying things, he doesn’t process, but it doesn’t matter, because John is here, and he’s not leaving, he’s not leaving.  He’s here, and he’s staying.  They’re both staying.

It will be alright.


End file.
